By Kim Rahn
Can knowledge about real mice be learned from Mickey Mouse cartoons?
Of course not, and aquariums using dolphins for “eco-education” should set their dolphins free if they really want people to learn how to respect the species, according to Richard O’Barry, a global campaigner against keeping dolphins in captivity.
“The dolphin show for ecology education is not an educational experience. It is simply amusement. And it’s sad for me to see people amused by a dolphin show because a dolphin show is really nothing more than animal abuse. It’s spectacle of dominance and it’s a form of bad education,” O’Barry, director of Dolphin Project, said at a press conference in Seoul, Friday.
The marine mammal expert is visiting Korea to support the efforts by the Korean Animal Welfare Foundation and Seoul City to free dolphins at Seoul Zoo at sea off Jeju Island.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said in mid-March that he would return one of five dolphins at the zoo, a male named Jedol, after learning it was illegally captured in Jeju. He also suspended the dolphin show.
The city collected public opinion on whether or not to terminate the show entirely, and said on Tuesday it would convert the show into an educational program about dolphin ecology. But animal rights’ activists, including O’Barry, claim it is still a show performed in an artificial environment and is not educational at all.
“Those who voted to keep the dolphins inside the building for educational purposes need to look at Japan. Japan has 51 dolphin parks, which is amazing when you consider it’s the size of California. There are 127 million people in Japan and most of them have been to dolphin shows and have been ‘educated.’ Yet they have the largest slaughter of dolphins in the world,” the former dolphin trainer said.
He highly praised the mayor’s decision to free Jedol.
“The mayor is the hero in this story. If this project is successful, it will send a powerful, positive message to the rest of the world about Seoul, Korea’s respect for nature.”
But O’Barry claimed not only Jedol but also other dolphins at the zoo should be freed as well. Regarding concern over whether they would adapt to the wild again if freed, he said the issue should not be seen from the human perspective.
“It’s not about us setting them free. It’s really about giving the dolphins choices and decisions. They don’t have any choices or decisions in captivity,” he said.
“After returning them to Jeju Island, putting them in a safe sanctuary, where they can experience the natural rhythms of the sea, tides, the currents, the sunshine and fresh air, and rehabilitating them, if they choose to return to their family, that’s their choice. If for some reason they choose to stay there, we’re prepared to take care of them forever.”
O’Barry had a short meeting with Mayor Park Friday afternoon and talked about how to release the dolphins.
On Wednesday, he and two other experts — Naomi Rose, senior scientist at Humane Society International, and Samuel Hung, director of Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project — visited the zoo to look around the living environment of the marine mammals there. They also visited Jeju the next day to inspect a possible site for Jedol’s adaptation training.
“The dolphins I saw there were not living. Living is doing things, they had no life there, they were simply surviving,” O’Barry said.
The campaigner was the trainer of five dolphins used in the television series Flipper during the 1960s. But he career-switched after one of the dolphins, Kathy, died in his arms and has since devoted himself to combating animal captivity. He believes Kathy committed suicide.
In 1970, he launched the Dolphin Project campaign to educate people about the plight of dolphins in captivity. He is now with the Earth Island Institute, which leads the campaign. He was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” a movie about the captivity of and trade in dolphins.